11/12/2012

Am I missing something about the new head of the New York Times?

Let me get this straight, George Entwistle, who has only been the BBC's director general for two months, resigned on Saturday. But Mark Thompson, who ran the BBC when the coverup actually occurred, is set to become chief executive of the New York Times today. Does this make sense to anyone? Some pretty serious problems here.

BBC Trust chairman Chris Patten said on Sunday confidence had to be restored if the publicly funded corporation was to withstand pressure from rivals, especially Rupert Murdoch's media empire, which would try to take advantage of the turmoil.

"If you're saying, 'Does the BBC need a thorough structural radical overhaul?', then absolutely it does, and that is what we will have to do," Patten, a one-time senior figure in Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party and the last British governor of Hong Kong, told BBC television. . . .

If a company in another industry were to hire someone in a similar situation, would the news media give the person largely a free pass? Yet, it seems that the rest of the media is pretty quite about what is happening at the New York Times.